The Sardinian Embassy Chapel was an important

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

church and

embassy chapel An embassy chapel is a place of worship within a foreign mission. Historically they have sometimes acted as clandestine churches, tolerated by the authorities to operate discreetly. Since embassies are exempt from the host country's laws, a form o ...

attached to the Embassy of the

Kingdom of Sardinia The Kingdom of Sardinia,The name of the state was originally Latin: , or when the kingdom was still considered to include Corsica. In Italian it is , in French , in Sardinian , and in Piedmontese . also referred to as the Kingdom of Savoy-S ...

in the

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...

area of London. It was demolished in 1909.

History

The chapel was in existence several years before it became an embassy chapel. During the reign of James II, 54

Lincoln's Inn Fields Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in develo ...

was occupied by priests of the

Franciscan Order , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

, who built a chapel behind it. Following the flight of James II in 1688, the Franciscans withdrew and the chapel was destroyed by the mob. By 1700 the restored buildings were occupied by the Portuguese embassy, which probably moved into them soon after 1688. By 1715 a Sicilian embassy chapel is recorded there. In 1720 the

Duke of Savoy The titles of count, then of duke of Savoy are titles of nobility attached to the historical territory of Savoy. Since its creation, in the 11th century, the county was held by the House of Savoy. The County of Savoy was elevated to a Duchy of Sav ...

exchanged his kingdom of Sicily with the Emperor for the kingdom of Sardinia. The first reference to the Sardinian chapel dates from 1722.Evinson, Denis, ''Catholic Churches of London'', Sheffield Academic Press, 1998, pp. 85–88. In 1759, the chapel burnt to the ground, but within three years a handsome and spacious new building was erected at the expense of the King of Sardinia."The Church of SS. Anselm and Cecilia"
''British History Online''. The chapel was richly endowed with silver plate and works of art. The silver, which still belongs to the chapel's successor church, is now on loan and display at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. A well-known print of London's eighteenth-century Catholic bishop,

Richard Challoner Richard Challoner (29 September 1691 – 12 January 1781) was an English Roman Catholic bishop, a leading figure of English Catholicism during the greater part of the 18th century. The titular Bishop of Doberus, he is perhaps most famous for hi ...

shows him preaching in the Sardinian Chapel, behind him the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

with its

reredos A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a church. It often includes religious images. The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular architecture, for ex ...

painting of the Deposition. Challoner called the Embassy Chapel "the chief support of religion in London," where it served as an "ersatz cathedral."Kaplan, Benjamin J., ''Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe,'' Harvard University Press, 2007, Chapter 8, pp. 186 ff. Embassies were a very particular subset of

clandestine church A clandestine church ( nl, schuilkerk), defined by historian Benjamin J. Kaplan as a "semi-clandestine church", is a house of worship used by religious minorities whose communal worship is tolerated by those of the majority faith on condition th ...

es. Early modern embassy staff, who commonly lived in the ambassadorial residence, were permitted to have in-house chapels and chaplains, especially where, in the wake of the Reformation, they lived in a country that banned their religious faith. These soon drew members of the same faith to join the worship services in the embassy. In London, the streets outside the houses and house chapels of the Spanish, French and Venetian embassies were the scenes of public protests, sometimes violent. The police sometimes attempted to detain British people who attended Catholic services in the embassy chapels, but embassy chapels were not exclusive to Britain or to Catholic embassies. The Dutch Republic sponsored chapels in twelve of its embassies, which acted as churches for local Reformed Protestants. Emperor Leopold I sponsored them wherever he could, "That Catholic services might be held to comfort the Catholics of the area, and to promote the further growth of this religion." By the late eighteenth century, a new legal principle had come into being,

extraterritoriality In international law, extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Historically, this primarily applied to individuals, as jurisdiction was usually cla ...

, according to which, "the ambassador and the precincts of the embassy stood as if on the soil of his homeland, subject only to its laws." In the eighteenth century, English subjects ceased to be harassed for attending services at the Sardinian Embassy. On Easter Sunday 1772 James Boswell and Pasquale Paoli "worshipped together at the Sardinian Chapel." Martin, Peter ''A Life of James Boswell''. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999 The chapel was again wrecked in the

Gordon riots The Gordon Riots of 1780 were several days of rioting in London motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment. They began with a large and orderly protest against the Papists Act 1778, which was intended to reduce official discrimination against British ...

of 1780. Afterwards compensation was awarded by the government, and the chapel was repaired and reopened in 1781. In 1798, the Sardinian ambassador closed the chapel and proposed to let the house, but the chaplains and the

Vicar Apostolic A vicar (; Latin: ''vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pref ...

, Bishop John Douglass, were able to obtain the property. The embassy became a clergy house and the chapel was reopened in 1799. It continued, however, to be under the patronage and protection of the King of Sardinia until 1858. In 1853, the name of the chapel was altered to St Anselm's Church, which in 1861 was further altered to the Church of St Anselm and St Cecilia. When the thoroughfare of Kingsway was driven through the previous maze of tiny streets west of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the church was one of the many buildings that had to be demolished. An alternative site on which to build, fronting Kingsway, was provided. By disposal in 1902 of the old site opposite Keeley Street,

Cardinal Vaughan Herbert Alfred Henry Vaughan, MHM (15 April 1832 – 19 June 1903) was an English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1892 until his death in 1903, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1893. He was t ...

was not only able to purchase the new site in Kingsway and erect upon it the present Church of St Anselm and St Cecilia, but he was left with some £10,000 to spare, which he placed to the credit of the

Westminster Cathedral Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It is the largest Catholic church in the UK and the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster. The site on which the cathedral stands in the City of ...

Building Fund. Several furnishings in the present church were brought from the old one, including the oval

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite. Marble is typically not Foliation (geology), foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the ...

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

with mahogany cover, the organ of 1857, the arms of the House of Savoy, the large painting of the Deposition, and in the south aisle the sarcophagus-shaped Lady Altar. The former Sardinian Chapel was demolished in 1909, and replaced by the Church of St Anselm and St Cecilia.

History

See also

References

Further reading